We doubt very much whether the majority of the American Jews realize what is going on in the lands of Jewish oppression, Poland, Rumania, the Ukraine, Hungary, and so forth. Most of our people here think that the Jews in the Eastern European countries are suffering revolution and counterrevolution as a result of the war and its aftermath. The fact of the matter is, however, that they are not suffering like many other peoples, that they are not on the verge of the abyss, as these others are, but rather that they have been and are in the depths of the abyss itself. The English expression that would characterize best the terrible situation of European Jewry, is the phrase, "agony of death". Millions of Jews are actually starving; fifty per cent of the newly born die in infancy and the death toll among the adults has reached unheard-of proportions. The Black Flag is unfurled over the ghettos of Eastern Europe and new graves are daily being added to the overcrowded cemeteries. In addition to all of this hellish pain and suffering, our brethren 2in Eastern Europe are constantly facing pogrom and massacre at the hands of the scum of Slavic humanity. The number of Jews massacred in the Ukraine alone, during the last ten months, has reached a quarter of a million. The number of Jews who died at the hands of the Polish, Rumanian, and Hungarian pogrommists, since the armistice and the revolution in the central European countries, is hard to estimate.

These unfortunate Jews cannot possibly expect help from their barbarous neighbors, nor can they expect help from the poor Jews of Europe. We American Jews are their only hope, and our aid, their only consolation, and unless we help them, they will perish from hunger and from the terrible blows of the Polish and Ukrainian pogrommists, and will go down in a sea of blood and tears.

The only message we can bring to our unfortunate brethren in Eastern Europe on the day of Rosh Hashanah, the fateful day of judgment, is to pledge our help and to fulfill our pledges! American Jews, generous and idealistic, will no doubt make this solemn pledge on Rosh Hashanah, will give comfort and 3aid to our brethren in the countries of their oppression and will thus become the saviors and the redeemers of our agonized brothers and sisters across the Atlantic.